Page 88 - Daniel

nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron” (Rev. 19:15). If it were
not necessary to make Daniel’s image conform somehow to the
amillennial concept of the gradual conquering of the world by the
gospel, no one would ever have dreamed that the smiting by the stone in
Nebuchadnezzar’s dream described a long process now more than two

thousand years underway and still far from completion. The fact is that
the amillennial interpretation does not give any reasonable explanation
of the catastrophic character of the stone smiting the image.

The only basis on which prophetic interpretation can be judged is
whether it corresponds to the proposed fulfillment. So we can state again
that nothing is more evident today than that the stone, if it reflects the
church or the spiritual kingdom that Christ formed at His first coming, is
not in any sense of the term occupying center stage in a world in which
Gentile power has been destroyed. As a matter of fact, for the past

century or more the church has been an ebbing tide in the affairs of the
world, and there has been no progress whatever in the church’s gaining
control of the world politically. If the image represents Gentile political
power, it is very much still standing.

Accordingly, the interpretation is much preferred that the expression
“in the days of those kings” refers to the kings who rule during the last
generation of Gentile power. While this is not specifically related to the
toes of the image, other passages speak specifically of ten kings in the
end times (Dan. 7:24; Rev. 17:12). So it is not unreasonable to hold that

this is a reference to the final state of the kingdom and the final rulers.
The description of the stone as being cut out “from a mountain by no

human hand” has sometimes been interpreted as Mount Zion
specifically, but it is better to consider this as a symbolic picture of
political sovereignty. The stone is part and parcel of the sovereignty of
God of which it is an effective expression. The symbolism clearly
indicates an origination with God rather than with human beings. The
effect is that the fifth kingdom, the kingdom of God, replaces completely
all vestiges of the preceding kingdoms, a prophecy that can only be

fulfilled in any literal sense by a reign of Christ over the earth. The
amillennial interpretation, attempting to find fulfillment of the image’s
destruction in history, does not provide a reasonable explanation of this
passage. Only the premillennial position, which correlates this event